Due to this, BBC Radio Shropshire have been mixing music & news ever since, including opting out of the regional show broadcast from Worcester, which is still going out on H & W & Stoke.
Presumbly this will continue until at least 7pm, when Shropshire take over responsibility for the regional evening programming. (Can Shropshire or any BBC LR run 2 separate programming at the same time? One show to their own frequency & another to other frequencies! I know WM could do it in the Pebble Mill days, broadcasting 'The Late Show' from one studio to other frequencies other than WM, while WM did sport themselves, which gave 'Late Show' callers the side effect of getting WM sport output rather than the 'Late Show' output while waiting to go on air! Pebble Mill also used to broadcast 'The Sunday Night Party' to Stoke, Shropshire & H & W, but not WM & C &W, who had their own programmes!)
Some woman called Amy is on until 4 then the brekky presenter Eric Smith from then on.
Due to this, BBC Radio Shropshire have been mixing music & news ever since, including opting out of the regional show broadcast from Worcester, which is still going out on H & W & Stoke.
Presumbly this will continue until at least 7pm, when Shropshire take over responsibility for the regional evening programming. (Can Shropshire or any BBC LR run 2 separate programming at the same time? One show to their own frequency & another to other frequencies!
It should technically be perfectly possible I'd have thought, the station will have more than one studio and it's just a case of routing each to whereever they need to go. Many LR stations do split programmes, either in different areas or on MW/FM or DAB/FM/MW.
I say technically possible because I suspect the problem would be more practical - they'd only have one switchboard and maybe one production area (the area where producers and phone ops sit)... and then there's staffing of course
According to Digital Spy, Beacon Shropshire also opted out of network to cover the Shrewsbury situation.(Never would have expected that thesedays!)
Bearing in mind BBC Radio Shropshire would've been a lot closer to base, than Beacon would've been to theirs(assuming they still do report to Wolverhampton, as last I heard there is no Beacon Shrewsbury premises thesedays), how did Beacon do compared to the Beeb?
Anyone spotted the BBC WM thread on DS? I thought I had a bee in my bonnet about the station!
Beacon is owned by local company Orion now, I don't think it would have happened under GWR/GCAP/Global
Global introduced Shrewsbury Town commentaries and reports. BRMB a bigger station I know and traditionally less reliant on networking gave special coverage to riots and bomb alerts, in recent years. GWR/GCap stations have given special coverage on events such as flooding. These big radio groups know when opting out of networking will work in their favour. Orion and Global are both in business and wouldn't do anything unless it would make the money in the long run.
Global introduced Shrewsbury Town commentaries and reports. BRMB a bigger station I know and traditionally less reliant on networking gave special coverage to riots and bomb alerts, in recent years. GWR/GCap stations have given special coverage on events such as flooding.
But things have changed since then if they hadn't sold them off a station like Beacon would probably be just another Heart outlet (there's the original Heart in Brum of course but it doesn't get out to shropshire that well) and even less likely to do opt outs. Being part of a small network of 3 stations means that they have more resources locally than they would have otherwise.
It makes sense from the school/council perspective I guess - single point of contact for each school, and one definitive list, so that there shouldn't be conflicting information if Radio Shropshire have been told a school is closed and Beacon hasn't been yet.
I guess there is also a security advantage - I understand that there is a password which has to be given with the report of a school closure to authenticate that it is coming from the school and not some random kid who wants the day off putting on a deep voice and pretending to be the headmaster. If only Radio Shropshire need these passwords rather than all of the radio stations in a patch, it makes the whole thing more secure.
